Does Abdul el Sayed support pornography in school?

Democratic Senate nominee Abdul el Sayed tried to argue on national television that transgender issues are not really a problem, except to the degree that Republican politicians “manufacture these social issues.”On one level, this is just a standard liberal line on social issues: Nobody actually objects to the latest liberal culture war cause, but Republicans bring up these issues to radicalize the rubes. But el Sayed’s full answer is much more interesting than that because he lays out a very flawed but fairly common understanding of the human mind and soul.Here is his argument:“The notion, somehow, that you are going to prevent your child from being exposed to something that you may find disagreeable, and that that is going to be because of school is so profoundly outdated. … I think it is really important for us to recognize that the free flow of information is actually a beautiful thing. It’s actually really important. And the most important thing you can do is not try to protect a person from seeing a thing.”The first obvious and glaring mistake: El Sayed posits that anything a child could possibly see or hear is simply information or a viewpoint. He pretends that no sights, sounds, or words could actually be harmful.This displays an overly rationalistic anthropology that considers the human mind to be a fleshy computer and ignores the human soul. It’s a particularly absurd viewpoint on the transgender issue, which has to do with sex, after all.A pervert named Richard Cox (I am not joking) exposed himself to girls and women in Arlington and Fairfax County in Northern Virginia regularly for months because of gender ideology. Cox pretended he was a woman — he is what el Sayed would call “a trans woman” — and Virginia gave him a driver’s license reflecting this lie. County officials let the man into the women’s locker room because gender ideology required them to go along with his lie. In the locker rooms, he exposed himself to girls and women. Again and again. Fairfax County refused to press charges against him because of the ideology.So young girls seeing a gross, old sex offender expose himself for his own perverted gratification is, in the language of el Sayed, just the “free flow of information,” even if this is “something that you may find disagreeable.”What’s scary is what el Sayed’s viewpoint implies. By el Sayed’s argument, of course, there’s no reason to object when public school teachers show pornography to kids — which is something some public school teachers actually believe.So, if we take el Sayed’s argument seriously, he is for schoolteachers showing pornography to kids because, hey, kids can get it anywhere on the internet.HOW THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT MADE HEALTHCARE UNAFFORDABLEHow does one get to this absurd view? There are two things el Sayed is missing. Images, words, and sounds are not mere information. They change us. Some images, words, and sounds make us better. Some — such as pornography and graphic violence — harm us. Just because a kid might find inappropriate material on his own doesn’t mean a school should put that material in front of him. El Sayed’s comments reveal a deeply flawed philosophy that has some pretty terrifying implications.